Google, disappointed with the approval of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law

13.11.2014

The recent modification of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, approved last October 30, 2014 (Law 21/2014, of November 4, amending the consolidated text on Intellectual property Act, approved by Legislative Royal Decree 1/1996, of 12 April) has included, among other important aspects, the right for publishing companies to a compensation for the use of their contents.  Aside from the economic damages that the media will suffer, Google and other aggregators are against this new incorporation due to the risk of restriction of the freedom of information that will take place due to the limitations applied.
 
This compensation, also known as the “Google fee” or AEDE canon, is an unwaivable right for the editors and other right holders to receive a “fair compensation” from the aggregators for making available their contents to the public.  This implies that even though Google erased all the information in the content and only provided the link, the search engine would still have to pay the fee at hand.  Since it is an unwaivable right, The Spanish Publishers’ Association (AEDE) would still collect the fee even though the individual right holder renounced to charge the compensation.  This would make Spain the only country in the world that places a fee on linking to public digital content on the Internet. 
 
This way, Google is directly affected by the article 32.2 of the new law, since it forces the search engine to pay a canon to the media that appears indexed in Google News.  Google has recognised in a communication their deception with the approval of this law:
"We are disappointed with the new law because we believe that services like Google News help publishers bring traffic to their sites. As far as the future is concerned, we will continue working with the Spanish publishers to help increase their revenues while we evaluate our options within the framework of the new legislation”.
 
The famous search engine already took drastic measures when Germany wanted to impose a fee, and is willing to take even more severe measures against the new IP Law and close its news service in Spain.  If Google decides to close Google News in Spain, it would be the first democratic country in the world in which the company closed its popular service.
 
There are no official records in Spain yet, but the closure of Google News could entail great losses in the digital newspapers market as well as the income generated by digital advertising.  
 
Written by: Athena Poysky and Lida Hernández
Source: http://www.genbeta.com/actualidad/google-dispuesto-a-cerrar-google-news-en-espana-si-se-aprueba-el-canon-aede
Image: Tomas de Aquino. Bajo licencia creative commons (CC BY 2.0)
 

 



© 2003 uaipit.com. Tous droits réservés. ® Marque Communauté déposée 2003. Université d'Alicante.

Portail juridique: sur marque, brevet , droit, infractions au code pénal , le droit , le droit international , la propriété intellectuelle , la propriété industrielle, mediation
Ce site utilise des cookies...+info